**
On with my "review". First of all, in genre terms, the movie is a bit confused. It's sort of an action movie, only there really aren't that many action scenes, and in my opinion, they're quite poor. I liked David Edelstein's review for National Public Radio, referenced on Wikipedia. He calls the action sequences "spectacularly incoherent", and I have to agree. The movie's great car chase sequence is exactly that, an incoherent mess, which only works when you don't think about it. The great end fight with the Joker was, in my opinion and Edelstein's, a total mess. I thought it was poorly done and anti-climactic, and the fight between Batman and the Joker was just lame.
What makes this worse is that the setting has effectively changed. Sez the New York Times:
All the talk of darkness obscures what may come as an aesthetic surprise in “The Dark Knight”: the creepy shadows and gothic Wayne Manor are gone, replaced by sleek towers, shiny surfaces, bright lighting and the vistas of a city with shoulders bigger than Batman’s. “I’ve tried to unclutter the Gotham we created on the last film,” said Nathan Crowley, Mr. Nolan’s production designer. “Gotham is in chaos. We keep blowing up stuff. So we can keep our images clean,” setting a solitary hero against the vastness of Chicago.
That's all well and good, but it creates one big problem. Once the movie is set in a seemingly realistic world, the cartoony action scenes just don't make any sense. Because the movie seems to be happening in our "real" world, all kinds of questions crop up.
The biggest problem in terms of realism is the Joker's titanic evil ploys. During the course of the movie, he rigs two large ferries, two buildings and a hospital to explode. When, at the end of the movie, Gotham Central Hospital gets blown up, the entire building is demolished by explosives. I'm sorry, how did he manage all this? In the climactic fist fight with Batman, the Joker even brags about having created all this chaos "with just a little dynamite and a couple of drums of gasoline". Erm, you seem to have done a hell of a lot more than that. Among the many things he manages is poisoning the city's police commissioner. He ambushes the honor guard at the commissioner's funeral and replaces them with his men. He mounts an elaborate ambush of a police motorcade carrying Harvey Dent.
In a cartoon world, I suppose the supervillain can have an army of henchmen at his beck and call. I mean, in a Daredevil movie, I can well imagine the Hand doing all this. I can see Cobra getting this done.
But here's the problem: the Joker is a lunatic. All of his henchmen we see, after the bank heist that kicks off the movie, seem to be more or less insane; we learn at least one has been in Arkham. When he's recruiting new members at the start of the movie, he says he has a small organization and, tellingly, recruits the goons of other criminals.
So is he a psycho running a small group of lunatics, or an evil criminal mastermind with nearly limitless resources? In a cartoon world, I can accept what he does; in a realistic world, I want explanations. He seems to marshal a huge amount of resources into gigantic criminal operations beyond anything anyone in the real world has ever done. He wires an entire hospital to explode without anyone finding out. He orchestrates a shutdown of Gotham City's bridges and tunnels, and rigs several ferries with elaborate bombs. How does he do it? No explanation is given. First he's portrayed as a psychotic small-time newcomer to the scheme, then he effortlessly morphs into a criminal overlord. Hey, it isn't easy to wire an entire hospital with explosives! How did he do that? We just don't know.
Toward the end of the movie, some of the stuff he gets up to is just totally insane, and not in a good way. The stunt with the ferries rigged with bombs is just totally pointless. It doesn't serve any purpose in advancing the plot or the issues of the movie, and is instead a fairly shallow morality play.
**
This is really a lead-in to the biggest problem the movie has. At the beginning, it seems to have a fairly clear theme. Christian Bale summarized it for the New York Times:
“As we looked through the comics, there was this fascinating idea that Batman’s presence in Gotham actually attracts criminals to Gotham, attracts lunacy,” he said. “When you’re dealing with questionable notions like people taking the law into their own hands, you have to really ask, where does that lead? That’s what makes the character so dark, because he expresses a vengeful desire.”
At the beginning of the movie, the theme that Batman, by making law enforcement so much more effective, is actually creating a niche for lunatics like the Joker. In a nutshell, what kind of incentives is Batman actually creating for criminals?
The problem? They don't actually explore this idea or its ramifications at all. It gets mentioned a couple of times, but it doesn't really get examined at all. It's like they're flashing a theme at us like a cue card a couple of times, but that's it. First the Joker is a psycho brought forward by Batman's actions, then by about halfway through the movie, he's just become a supervillain.
The bank heist that kicks off the movie also raises some interesting questions. If the Joker runs his operations by killing everyone he recruits, is anyone seriously going to work for him? That raises some big questions. Has Batman really driven crime into such a corner that the only option criminals have left is madness? Is the Joker really only going to hire lunatics? How will that restrict what he does?
Predictably, by now, none of this is addressed.
More from Bale:
In Mr. Bale’s view “The Dark Knight” is an even lonelier outing for his character, who once naïvely thought his crime fighting could be a finite endeavor. “This escalation has now meant that he feels more of a duty to continue,” he said. “And now you have not just a young man in pain attempting to find some kind of an answer, you have somebody who actually has power, who is burdened by that power, and is having to recognize the difference between attaining that power and holding on to it.”
Certainly this theme is present as well. Only, they don't really do anything with this either. Batman/Wayne has some dialogue in which he talks about this, and that's really it.
I like the way Edelstein summed up another theme of the movie:
The Joker manipulates gangsters to keep crime alive, and assassinates or corrupts do-gooders like Aaron Eckhart's cleft-chinned district attorney, Harvey Dent. Meanwhile, Batman's hands — or wings — are tied by pesky ethics. He can't stanch the madness.
On paper, this morality play is fascinating, but a lot of the movie doesn't transcend its talking points. The psychological twists are dubious and the plotting herky-jerky, with leaps in logic.
Really, the whole question of Batman's "code" is brought up several times but never really addressed in a coherent manner. The moral dilemma doesn't seem meaningful at all because it never becomes an issue.
Rober Ebert himself says, of the Joker:
He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.
...
Throughout the film, he devises ingenious situations that force Batman (Christian Bale), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to make impossible ethical decisions. By the end, the whole moral foundation of the Batman legend is threatened.
Yes, but. The moral dilemmas are, at best, silly. The way they're resolved is meaningless and contains no statement on ethics. The dilemmas themselves aren't adressed in any sensible way. They have no more moral force than a video game endboss. What's the moral dilemma in forcing Batman to choose between saving a heroic DA or his girlfriend? None. The very definition of Batman is setting the good of the many over the good of the few, as Spock would put it. What's the moral statement the filmmakers want to make with the silly scene with the ferries? There isn't one.
I also argued earlier that the situations the Joker devises aren't ingenious, they're totally unrealistic.
The whole situation is complicated when references to terrorism are thrown in, again semingly at random. The force of the message the filmmakers have is best summarized by these two quotes from the movie's Wikipedia article:
On July 25, 2008, mystery writer Andrew Klavan, writing in The Wall Street Journal, compared the extreme measures that Batman takes to fight crime with those U.S. President George W. Bush has used in the War on Terror. Klavan claims that, "at some level" The Dark Knight is "a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war."
...
Reviewing the film in the Sunday Times, Cosmo Landesman reached the opposite conclusion to Klavan, arguing that "offers up a lot of moralistic waffle about how we must hug a terrorist - okay, I exaggerate. At its heart, however, is a long and tedious discussion about how individuals and society must never abandon the rule of law in struggling against the forces of lawlessness. In fighting monsters, we must be careful not to become monsters - that sort of thing. The film champions the antiwar coalition’s claim that, in having a war on terror, you create the conditions for more terror. We are shown that innocent people died because of Batman - and he falls for it".
You could argue the movie presents this dilemma. Actually, it doesn't; it just sort of throws it out there and does nothing with it, like it does with all its other themes. They just show it to you, and then discard it.
By the way, since when do Ebert's reviews read like the blurbs on the backs of DVD boxes? Geez, what rubbish.
**
One of the major sources of confusion in the movie is that it can't quite decide what it is. The bank heist at the very beginning is straight out of a Michael Mann crime thriller. After that, the stage seems to be set for the epic Batman-Joker showdown. Once we get that, it feels like the movie should be over, but it isn't because Harvey Dent as Two-Face hijacks the plot, and suddenly we're in a whole different movie. Was this a movie about Batman and the Joker, or a movie about Harvey Dent? It seems to try to be both, and is thereby neither.
In the movie, Batman and Dent are presented as doubles. In the final scene, they fall from a building and end up lying on the ground next to each other, Dent in a light suit and Batman in his dark costume. In the end, Batman and Gordon have a discussion that is meant to combine the two themes of the Joker and Two-Face. With Harvey Dent going insane and becoming Two-Face, Batman says the Joker has won. As Batman puts it, "he took the best of us and made him fall", or words to that effect.
I have two really major problems with this. First of all, "the best of us"? You're Batman. And you're talking to the future Comissioner Gordon. And you two think Harvey Dent was better than you? Let's recap.
We're introduced to Harvey Dent when he's the new hotshot District Attorney, and from what we learn of him at the beginning of the movie, the guy looks like a pure-bred opportunist. He was a cop in Internal Affairs, where he got his nickname "Two-Face", and he went on to become a glamorous DA. He looks like a careerist, out to make a name for himself. This contrasts especially starkly with the principled, businesslike Gordon, to whom he is more or less compared at the start of the movie.
Bruce Wayne apparenly becomes convinced he's the real deal, and throws him a fundraiser. The problem is, we as viewers aren't really given any reason to believe he is the real deal. This confusion persists to the end, when he declares himself to be Batman in order to provoke the Joker to attack him. Is he doing it as part of a grand scheme to capture the Joker, nobly putting himself in harm's way, or is he doing it as a publicity stunt? We can't tell. Even his gigantic lawsuit against, apparently, every criminal ever in Gotham, seems more like a PR caper.
The greatest problem with Dent is his fall from grace; his transformation into Two-Face. Apparently, when Maggie Gyllenhaal gets blown up and Dent is disfigured, he goes completely insane. He refuses treatment for his ghastly face, and after a brief and pointless conversation with the Joker, starts killing people and eventually tries to sadistically murder Gordon's children.
Firstly, this whole development is totally unbelievable. An ex-cop and district attorney suddenly becomes a vicious, sadistic criminal who wants to murder his ex-colleague's children? Harvey Dent is portrayed in a totally schizophrenic way throughout the movie. First he's a young wannabe political celebrity; then he's the most virtuous DA in the history of Gotham; then he's a murdering psychopath. None of this makes any sense! The character doesn't have what is called an arc of development; he has two sudden and inexplicable metamorphoses.
The second point is: where does Batman get off saying Dent was so great? We're told he's the White Knight of Gotham, somehow the best person out of the Batman/Gordon/Dent trio. We're told this, but what are we shown? Nothing in his character that we're shown on screen in any way leads us to believe he's a paragon of virtue like they say he are. He's subjected to two moral "tests" in the movie: when he's interrogating a villain at gunpoint, and when Maggie Gyllenhaal is blown up. In the first, he's acting totally out of line in kidnapping a suspected criminal and pistol-whipping him for information. How is that virtuous?
The most telling moral contrast is the second test. Maggie Gyllenhaal is blown up, and Harvey Dent flips out and starts killing people. What's the crucial point that was staring me in the face all through the final sequence? Batman had his Maggie Gyllenhaal blown up too, but does he flip out and start killing people? Hell no, he's Batman! He may be a psychopath, but he's a psychopath with morals. What is Harvey Dent? Certainly not the best of those men. As soon as he faces a real moral test, he flips out and starts killing people.
Because he fails his "moral test", the whole idea expounded on in the closing stages of the movie is totally unbelievable. They keep telling us about how great Harvey Dent is, yet show us nothing that would make us actually believe that. Because of this, the great morality play of the final scenes, where Batman sacrifices his public image to save Dent, "the hero Gotham deserves", fails totally. Dent is no hero; Batman is.
By the way, at the very end they talk about Batman's status as an outsider; how he can do things because he doesn't need to be a hero. Another theme mentioned briefly and then tossed aside.
**
Finally, there's one thing that I have to say, and that is a little hard to write. The other thing that I was afraid of when I went to see this movie was Heath Ledger's performance. As everyone knows by now, he died shortly after filming it. Every time a young person dies, especially a glamorous young person like an actor, we're captivated by the tragedy of it. Think James Dean.
My fear was that this captivation can't not have affected the way we view his performance in Dark Knight. Specifically, when I started hearing about how brilliant Ledger was in the movie, I was afraid this was,at most, 10% good acting, and 90% "OMG hes dead".
Now that I've seen it, I don't know. Sure, Ledger is good. But then again, in watching him, there are several things to note. First, obviously, there's the "omg hes dead" factor. Secondly, he's playing a total maniac in a movie full of straight guys, which makes his performance stand out irrespective of its merits. Thirdly, the part is very well scripted. Much of the brilliance of the character comes from the dialogue; one of the most memorable aspects of the character is him telling the story of his scars. That's screenwriting, not acting, unless someone wants to imply he adlibbed most of his dialogue.
As a species, we humans view events in the world we perceive as stories. We string things together to make narratives. We're storytellers; that's how we understand the world around us. This tendency also skews our perceptions toward creating narratives. The story of Heath Ledger is a great tragedy if he's a young, up-and-coming star who delivers the performance of his life and then tragically dies soon after. That's a great story. We want to believe in great stories, and wanting to believe in that one gives us a huge incentive to overrate both this movie and Ledger's performance in it.
In short, I thought he was good. If there really weren't that many outstanding performances by actors in a supporting role, I'm not against him being nominated. But does he deserve an Oscar? I don't see it. Is his performance really that memorable? Is it "one for the ages"? I don't think so.
**
To sum up, I basically enjoyed the movie as I watched it, so I can't complain. I can't call it great, or even all that good. The plot is a total mess; a confusion of half-baked themes and almost-formed neat ideas that the director just sort of throws at you. The movie can't quite decide what it wants to be, and ends up not really being about anything. It doesn't really have any meaningful content, but it presents the illusion of meaningful content. On the other hand, I found the action sequences fairly dull and uninspiring.
For me, the whole movie sank when Batman and Gordon had their epic conversation at the end. When Harvey Dent's totally implausible rise and fall is elevated to the central theme of the movie, it sinks and takes the whole thing with it. So many things in the movie are a hair's breadth away from total implausibility and just silliness, not least Bruce Wayne's death metal voice as Batman.
I'm generally disappointed in the way movies today like to pretend they contain some kind of profound themes and content, when it's all pure glitter to distract you. I suppose the success of the Matrix is partly to blame; that movie is still the epitome of films that are supposedly deep and insightful but in reality are just glitter and kitsch.
My overall verdict? I don't know. I thought this was a really confused movie. I sort of enjoyed watching it, but I don't think I'd be bothered to see it again. It most definitely does not live up to the hype.
I gave it 3½ stars on Flickr, and I may have been overly generous. Heath Ledger's Joker is really the only memorable thing in this movie, and even that isn't as good as people are making it out to be.
In sum: not a great movie. Not even really a good one. It was just OK, and that's kind of disappointing.
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